Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions, along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war.

What Judith Miller failed to disclose was her failure to vet the so-called "defectors" [1]she used as sources for her columns that pushed the Bush administrations' false narrative of existant and future development of weapons of mass destruction. Her sources were dubious at best, and she completely ignored the statements of American weapons inspectors, withdrawn by the Bush administration, that there were no such weapons or active programs to produce them. Ms. Miller, whatever her motives, with an incredibly powerful "above the fold" byline in the New York Times, chose to join the drumbeat of war. Her irresponsible reporting eventually led to her dismissal by the paper.